What you're watching

TCA 2011: Sarah Michelle Gellar clones herself for 'Ringer'

August 4, 2011 | 6:00
pm

Fans of "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" have been waiting for Sarah Michelle Gellar to return to TV for eight years. They are getting more of her than they could've imagined in the new CW series, "Ringer," a thriller that has Gellar playing identical twins with mysterious — and possibly dangerous — agendas.

"They actually cloned me," Gellar joked on Thursday at the Television Critics Assn. media tour in Beverly Hills, where she appeared along with the show’s producers and other members of the cast. "We thought we'd take advantage of modern technology, and Dolly will be playing the other twin."

Getting serious, Gellar noted that the technology has come a long way since the basic split-screen techniques they used back in her "Buffy" days.

"There's so much more that's available now between face replacement and the stop‑motion cameras. So during the pilot, we played with all of them — it's kind of like kids with new toys — to figure out what works best. Ultimately what you find is, even though there is all this technology ... the heart of the scene is two people talking to each other."

Gellar says that she's excited to be returning to television, but it took her a while to recover from her cult stardom. "I was very burned out after 'Buffy.' It was exhausting. It took me from — essentially I was 18 on the pilot, and I was 24 and married, you know, when we finished. I had never had time. That show was my life. I sort of needed to explore and live that gypsy lifestyle, and I traveled."

But once her daughter was born, "I realized that I was done living the romantic lifestyle, and although it works for some actors, I want to be home. I want to put her to bed and get up with her in the morning, and I want to be there for her first day of school. And nothing offers that more than television. And what's been so interesting for me getting back into it was I didn't realize how much I missed it.... I think if I hadn't had the time away, I wouldn't have been able to appreciate the experience that I'm appreciating now."